Saturday - March 10
This morning I didn't set an alarm and somehow woke up at 9:30 wide awake. I successfully had another great night's rest. The bathroom situation was worse than the day before, but we sucked it up and waited for about 25 minutes to wash our faces and get ready.
After we were all set to go we ventured out to the main street and decided to cave and went to Dunkin Doughnuts. It smelled like home when I walked in, but the long line was a bit intimidating. We were told to wrap the line around the inside of the store because the line was slowly leaking out into the street.
I ordered an iced coffee, a sprinkled strawberry-iced doughnut and a strawberry-iced cream filled doughnut. I figured go big or go home. The iced coffee was quite refreshing and the filled doughnut was good, but the other one had a funny taste to it. It didn't taste like the strawberry-iced doughnuts I've had before.
During my lovely meal, a woman stopped by our table to beg for money, which is something that happens quite often over here. I normally don't mind them and just ignore them, but this woman I couldn't get over it. She came up to us and was holding a baby and saying she needed money to feed it. The weird thing was the baby seriously looked like a baby doll. I'm 98 percent sure it was fake and that only made me annoyed. She kept standing there and even after we said "sorry, but no," she didn't leave. People do this all the time — the not listening part — and it's probably one of the most annoying things I've dealt with while being here.
On a better note, while we were eating our breakfast outside in the gorgeous sun, we started planning our day. The only major thing I wanted to see was the Royal Palace, so that was our first stop. We followed the map, hoping we would go in the right direction. Two days in, we finally had the hang of the city — well, sort of.
Once we found our way to the palace we walked into the gardens right outside of it. There was the cutest golden retriever swimming in the fountain trying to get to its ball. After finding it, he/she jumped out and sprinted to its owner all happy and proud. It was the cutest thing and made me miss Lancey and Maxey.
We sat in the gardens and walked around admiring the beauty of it and embracing the sun on our faces. It was such a beautiful day out to just be walking around. While we were walking through the gardens we passed two teenage boys playing their guitars and singing in Spanish. It was very relaxing walking and then sitting listening to them. We walked up to the main road and mozied on over to the front of the Palace, which was beautiful as well. We then went and sat in front of the fountain and listened to an old man play his accordian.
While sitting there I had another one of those moments where I thought to myself, is this real life?
For the next half hour or so we walked around in search of the "old city" because we were told it was a good area to see. Along our walk we ran into a plaza that was beautifully constructed and had a lot of interesting things going on within it. There was a sparkly donkey that was moving around asking for money, a person acting like a baby in a stroller, and the best one was a man making huge bubbles that floated into the air where children chased it. I wanted to be one of the children and chase it!
Soon enough we continued through the plaza on our search of the old town and I realized I needed to use a restroom soon. We found a bar down a street less traveled and we ventured in. Amy and I ordered a glass of wine and Bethany ordered a beer. The two men working in the bar were very friendly and it was a very nice break from walking around.
Before I came to Italy, one of my friends who studied here last semester said to bring comfortable shoes because I would be doing a ton of walking. Thank goodness I took her advice seriously because I really have been walking a ton and during the day I always need to take a break after two hours or so because my feet are screaming at me.
For the rest of the afternoon we just ventured around the city and found a nice outlook in the old two to sit and look over Madrid.
When we got back to our hostel we relaxed for an hour, took a 15 minutes cat nap and then looked up Paseo del Pintor Rosales, a place Bethany had heard was good for watching a sunset. We decided we would hunt down somewhere to eat and have dinner while watching the beautiful sun set.
When we got to the street we went into a few places, but they were only serving drinks at the time. After about 30 minutes of trying to find somewhere to eat, we decided to go to a convenient store and get snacks and go to the park and have dinner later.
It was getting close to the time when the sun should be setting so we hurried up and bought our snacks. I was shaking at this point I was so starving. The only things I had today were a coffee, two doughnuts and a glass of wine. By 6 I was about to pass out so I downed all of my snacks and probably looked like a pig doing it.
The park was very crowded tonight, so it must be the place to be on beautiful nights. Families were having picnics on blankets, people were walking dogs and couples were making out on benches. When we found a bench to sit on there were three couples. One was making out and the other two were just sitting comfortably with each other. Then soon enough all of them were making out. Europeans are very much okay with PDA and it makes me sick. It also made me miss Kory a lot, which was not fun. It was also funny because couples would be walking and then all of a sudden the guy would stop the girl in front of us and pull her in for a kiss. It happened like three times! Amy, Bethany and I were all like, "really? Please go somewhere else."
The sun set at 7:16 and a cold breeze started settling in. The sunset was gorgeous though and I could definitely see why there were so many people at the park.
After we got all of our pictures we went back to the hostel where we hung out with our roommates for a little bit and then went out to dinner. We were all hungry again by this time, but we wanted to find the area to eat that we were told was good. We stumbled upon a restaurant that we had passed earlier in the day. We went in and no one spoke a lick of English. One guy was able to understand us enough and sat us at a table in the corner. When our waitress appeared she started spurting out a ton of Spanish and we just stared blankly at her.
This was the first time I had really experienced a language barrier. At least in Italy I'm able to figure out a few words, but here I didn't remember any of my Spanish. So when we were trying to talk with her, she and I kept using our hand gestures to get things through to each other. It was very intimidating at times.
I pointed to what I wanted, which were tostas samplers. I had assumed they were like what I had last night with my brie and onions. Bethany and Amy weren't sure what they had ordered, but Bethany thought she ordered fish tacos.
When my food came out I stared at it blankly. I had just ordered seafood on top of bread. I hate seafood, so I thought "Oh, crap."
When Bethany's came out it ended up being a steak for some reason. She ended up loving it and was pleasantly surprised. Amy enjoyed her lobster croquettes, which I actually tried and thought were very good.
Now to my seafood dilemma.
Bethany and Amy had to give me a pep talk to eat it because I obviously wasn't going to waste it. I knew one of them was salmon, but I had no idea what the other two were. So I tried the salmon. I kept putting it toward my mouth and then setting it down. It seriously took me like three times to actually try it and....meh. It was alright, but it's not something I would order or make for dinner. The other one was a type of cheese that was good, but Bethany had to be a brat and convinced me it was liver that I just ate. It wasn't. The third was like a crab coleslaw...which was odd, but good. I like sometimes like crab cakes, so that one wasn't too bad.
When we were done we asked for the bill and we paid her. We needed two euros back in change, but she never brought it back. It was the oddest thing, so we had to flag her down to ask for our change back and then she got kind of mad. It was odd.
We hopped on a metro home, and I packed for the night so I wouldn't have to in the morning. Bethany, Amy and I stayed up until 12:30 talking and eventually called it a night.
For the next half hour or so we walked around in search of the "old city" because we were told it was a good area to see. Along our walk we ran into a plaza that was beautifully constructed and had a lot of interesting things going on within it. There was a sparkly donkey that was moving around asking for money, a person acting like a baby in a stroller, and the best one was a man making huge bubbles that floated into the air where children chased it. I wanted to be one of the children and chase it!
Soon enough we continued through the plaza on our search of the old town and I realized I needed to use a restroom soon. We found a bar down a street less traveled and we ventured in. Amy and I ordered a glass of wine and Bethany ordered a beer. The two men working in the bar were very friendly and it was a very nice break from walking around.
Before I came to Italy, one of my friends who studied here last semester said to bring comfortable shoes because I would be doing a ton of walking. Thank goodness I took her advice seriously because I really have been walking a ton and during the day I always need to take a break after two hours or so because my feet are screaming at me.
For the rest of the afternoon we just ventured around the city and found a nice outlook in the old two to sit and look over Madrid.
When we got back to our hostel we relaxed for an hour, took a 15 minutes cat nap and then looked up Paseo del Pintor Rosales, a place Bethany had heard was good for watching a sunset. We decided we would hunt down somewhere to eat and have dinner while watching the beautiful sun set.
When we got to the street we went into a few places, but they were only serving drinks at the time. After about 30 minutes of trying to find somewhere to eat, we decided to go to a convenient store and get snacks and go to the park and have dinner later.
It was getting close to the time when the sun should be setting so we hurried up and bought our snacks. I was shaking at this point I was so starving. The only things I had today were a coffee, two doughnuts and a glass of wine. By 6 I was about to pass out so I downed all of my snacks and probably looked like a pig doing it.
The park was very crowded tonight, so it must be the place to be on beautiful nights. Families were having picnics on blankets, people were walking dogs and couples were making out on benches. When we found a bench to sit on there were three couples. One was making out and the other two were just sitting comfortably with each other. Then soon enough all of them were making out. Europeans are very much okay with PDA and it makes me sick. It also made me miss Kory a lot, which was not fun. It was also funny because couples would be walking and then all of a sudden the guy would stop the girl in front of us and pull her in for a kiss. It happened like three times! Amy, Bethany and I were all like, "really? Please go somewhere else."
The sun set at 7:16 and a cold breeze started settling in. The sunset was gorgeous though and I could definitely see why there were so many people at the park.
After we got all of our pictures we went back to the hostel where we hung out with our roommates for a little bit and then went out to dinner. We were all hungry again by this time, but we wanted to find the area to eat that we were told was good. We stumbled upon a restaurant that we had passed earlier in the day. We went in and no one spoke a lick of English. One guy was able to understand us enough and sat us at a table in the corner. When our waitress appeared she started spurting out a ton of Spanish and we just stared blankly at her.
This was the first time I had really experienced a language barrier. At least in Italy I'm able to figure out a few words, but here I didn't remember any of my Spanish. So when we were trying to talk with her, she and I kept using our hand gestures to get things through to each other. It was very intimidating at times.
I pointed to what I wanted, which were tostas samplers. I had assumed they were like what I had last night with my brie and onions. Bethany and Amy weren't sure what they had ordered, but Bethany thought she ordered fish tacos.
When my food came out I stared at it blankly. I had just ordered seafood on top of bread. I hate seafood, so I thought "Oh, crap."
When Bethany's came out it ended up being a steak for some reason. She ended up loving it and was pleasantly surprised. Amy enjoyed her lobster croquettes, which I actually tried and thought were very good.
Now to my seafood dilemma.
Bethany and Amy had to give me a pep talk to eat it because I obviously wasn't going to waste it. I knew one of them was salmon, but I had no idea what the other two were. So I tried the salmon. I kept putting it toward my mouth and then setting it down. It seriously took me like three times to actually try it and....meh. It was alright, but it's not something I would order or make for dinner. The other one was a type of cheese that was good, but Bethany had to be a brat and convinced me it was liver that I just ate. It wasn't. The third was like a crab coleslaw...which was odd, but good. I like sometimes like crab cakes, so that one wasn't too bad.
When we were done we asked for the bill and we paid her. We needed two euros back in change, but she never brought it back. It was the oddest thing, so we had to flag her down to ask for our change back and then she got kind of mad. It was odd.
We hopped on a metro home, and I packed for the night so I wouldn't have to in the morning. Bethany, Amy and I stayed up until 12:30 talking and eventually called it a night.
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